The Fired Up Ignite Fund exists because one person's passion for coaching and teaching left a mark that never faded — and because that kind of impact deserves to be paid forward.
"Are you fired up?"Mr. Steven Lindsay — Coach, Teacher, Inspiration
Steven Lindsay was a high school football coach and teacher with a way of showing up for people that's hard to put into words. Whether it was a 6am lift, a two-minute drill in the fourth quarter, a walk-through on a Wednesday afternoon, or the quiet before a big exam — his question was always the same.
"Are you fired up?"
Not rhetorical. He genuinely wanted to know. He wanted to know if you had found something worth caring about, if you were bringing everything you had to it, if the fire was still burning. And if it was — he would do everything in his power to help it grow.
Mr. Lindsay coached and taught with a level of passion that was genuinely contagious. It wasn't just football. It was the weight room, the classroom, the hallway. He carried the same energy into every space and it left a mark on the people around him that followed them well past graduation.
Claude Burns was one of those people. A student and player under Mr. Lindsay's coaching, Claude carried the lessons from that time — about passion, about showing up, about what genuine commitment looks like — into everything that came after.
Throughout his career, whenever the question that mattered most surfaced, it was always some version of Mr. Lindsay's: are you fired up about this? Not interested. Not willing. Fired up. There's a difference, and Mr. Lindsay taught him to see it.
The Fired Up Ignite Fund is Claude's way of honoring that — not with a plaque, but with real resources for the next generation of people who have that same relentless energy and need a push to get to the next level.
The MacArthur Fellows Program has long done something unusual: it bets on people rather than projects. It doesn't ask for proposals or deliverables. It identifies individuals who have already demonstrated, through their work and their commitment, that they are the kind of people who figure things out — and it invests in them unconditionally.
That idea stuck with Claude. Not the prestige of it — the principle. The most reliable signal of future impact is someone who is already deeply, undeniably, can't-help-it committed to something. Passion at that level is rare. When you find it, you fund it.
The Fired Up Ignite Fund applies that same logic at an earlier stage. Ages 17 to 25, when the fire is burning hot but the resources are often thin, is exactly when the right investment changes the trajectory. We're not funding projects. We're funding people.
Community fundraiser. The fund is sustained by donors who believe passion deserves investment. Each year, we raise the capital to support the next class of recipients.
Open applications. Anyone ages 17-25 can apply. We ask about your craft, your commitment, and what you'd do with the support — not your GPA or extracurricular list.
Review by one standard. Applications are evaluated with a single lens: is this person genuinely fired up? Do they have a clear sense of where they're going and what it takes to get there?
Flexible grants. Recipients receive financial support they can direct toward what they actually need — equipment, training, materials, travel, education, or whatever moves the work forward.
Obsession and commitment are as valuable as any credential. They deserve to be treated that way.
Knowing what you want to do — and being relentless about it — is rare. Lack of funding shouldn't be what stops you.
The motivated person in the room has an outsized effect on everyone around them. That's worth investing in.
We don't prescribe what success looks like. We back the people who are already building it, wherever that leads.